Bed weighing machines are used in particular for weighing hospital beds in situations in which a patient cannot leave the bed because of his state of health for his weight to be monitored, and therefore bed and patient have to be weighed together. A bed weighing machine usually has, for each leg of a bed, a respective weighing device with which the bed weight acting on the respective leg can be measured. Since the bed weighing machine according to the present invention serves in particular for determining the weight of a hospital bed together with a patient and a hospital bed usually has one wheel on each leg, a wheel suspender is provided for each weighing device in order namely to raise the leg together with the wheel and, in the raised state, to measure the proportional weight of the bed that acts on the weighing device. Accordingly, the wheel suspender serves to raise and, if appropriate, fix the wheel in a raised position, so that the proportional weight of the bed can act on the weighing device.
The applicant's patent application DE 10 2005 029 203.8 which has not been published before the filing date of the present patent application discloses a bed weighing machine with a weighing module, the operation of which in this respect is basically comparable to the weighing device operation just described. The wheel is pushed there onto a ramp by means of a lifting means, the lifting means having a lifting element which can be adjusted by a unit which can be adjusted in the axial direction and has self-locking. The axially adjustable unit can have, for example, a spindle with self-locking and can be driven by an electric motor drive, for example fed by means of a battery, in particular by means of a cordless screwdriver. In order to avoid repetitions, reference is made to DE 10 2005 018 279.8, the entire disclosure content of which is hereby expressly incorporated.